


finding a place

by WattStalf



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Everything, Eddie is trans, F/M, Gen, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Trans Character, Transphobia, no smut here, written for the kink meme but its not kinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Edie decides to start consciously thinking of herself in that way from here on out, and if she's ever asked her name, she decides that Eddie is a better substitute.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, prompts on the kinkmeme calling for more trans characters. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to write Eddie as a transman in the late 30s, and I gave it my best shot. The transition in pronouns occurs toward the end, because at the beginning, he's still figuring himself out and still thinking of himself as Edie.

On Edie's fifteenth birthday, she takes the money her aunt mailed to her and goes to a barbershop- a _barbershop_ , not a _salon_ \- and gets her hair cut short. She could have hacked it off herself, but she doesn't know if she can get it even, and it's her birthday, so she feels like splurging.

Of course, when she gets home her mother nearly has a heart attack and shrieks loud enough to wake the dead, and her father really lays into her. He asks her why she has to do stupid things like this and why she never thinks about anything before she does it, and why she can't just be like the other girls her age, for Christ's sake. Her fathers talks to her and talks to her and yells at her, and she just sits there and listens, looking over occasionally at her mother, who keeps shaking her head and frowning like somebody fucking died or something.

They don't eat the cake her mother baked the day before and she's sent to her room without dinner, something she's getting more and more used to since she's started to learn that she's always going to be a disappointment and that she shouldn't bother hiding her bad behavior from her parents.

She's had a short temper for as long as she can remember. Once, she overheard some boys in the neighborhood talking, and one of them bragged about a boxing match that his father had taken him to. He said that he was going to do that when he grew up and the group of boys started playfully fighting each other. When Edie asked to join in, they told her to “buzz off, boxing wasn't for little girls.” She managed to beat up two of them before they decided to scatter, and she made a habit of picking fights with them from that point on.

Ever since entering school, a girl's Catholic school, however, her behavior has gotten worse. Since she can't fight the boys anymore, she's perfectly fine with picking fights with girls, and she tries to break the dress code whenever she can, and she mouths off to teachers and makes vulgar jokes in class. Her laugh is loud and obnoxious, and even if she's the only person who thinks she's funny, she personally thinks she's  _hilarious_ .

Edith Blake knows that her parents hate her, and she isn't too fond of them either. They care too much, about what the neighbors think and about what the people at church think, and she has never been any good for their image. But it's her birthday now, and she hasn't received her present from them yet, so when they're asleep, she packs some of her things and creeps downstairs. She knows the combination to her father's safe after years of observation, but before she raids it, she eats over half of her birthday cake, all by herself.

The next morning, she boards a train for New York City.

~X~

Finding work is a pain in the ass, but finding somewhere to live as a young, unemployed, single woman with short hair is even harder, so she spends some of the her stolen money on new clothes- pants, men's shoes, and a shirt that's loose enough that her small breasts aren't noticeable. She goes back for an undershirt, just to be on the safe side, and wonders if she should splurge on a vest as well. In the end, she gets the vest and hopes that she will have enough money for rent and groceries until she can land a job.

Her “disguise” makes things a little easier, and she finds a small, dingy apartment, and she signs her name as simply “E. Blake”. She doesn't wear those clothes to look for a job, but she has slightly better luck and eventually finds employment in a factory with other women who give her rude looks for her appearance. Sometimes she hopes one of them will say something to her, because she's itching for a fight.

~X~

She's had a steady exercise routine for about two years, and she tries to keep it up despite long days of work exhausting her. There's nothing for her to train for, but she doesn't want to go soft just because she's finally out of her parents' house, and if a fight ever _does_ present itself to her, she wants to be in top shape. It's been so long since she's beaten the snot out of anyone that she feels like she's gonna go crazy.

~X~

Sometimes she wears her disguise- which is feeling less and less like a disguise- out of the house, and she ends up buying two more outfits like it with her first paycheck, even though she knows she needs to be saving. Money is tight after that, and she has to resort to pickpocketing and shoplifting to make it through, but she doesn't regret it. It's the first time in her life that she's had any clothes that she actually wants to wear.

But her happiness in that regard does not extend to the rest of her life, and she is very, very frustrated. She hates the ladies she works with and she hates her job, and she hates how terribly mundane life in the city is. When she ran away, she'd hoped for something more, but all she does is work her ass off all day, every day, and gets hardly anything in return. She doesn't know what it is that she wants, but she knows that it isn't this, and her workout routine becomes more rigorous because she needs to blow off steam.

It's when her frustration is at it's highest that she notices the headlines in the newspapers and begins to take an interest in the costumed adventurers that have begun to make themselves known. Hooded Justice is the first of them, but he isn't the last, and soon enough, Nite Owl makes an appearance as well. Edie isn't sure what draws her to them, but she is fascinated.

~X~

She tries digging through the dumpster once; she doesn't want to sink that low, but money is always tight and she wants to at least see what she can find. What she finds is trash, and lots of it, and not much else, but as she's tossing things to the side, hoping to find _something_ useful, she finds a bright yellow boiler suit.

It stands out to her, the color loud and ostentatious amongst the garbage, and she pulls it out with her. Yellow has been her favorite color since childhood, and when she's standing on the ground, holding the dirty fabric in out in front of her, it looks like it's almost her size. It would be incredibly baggy on her, but she's learned that that isn't really a bad thing.

Even so, she doesn't have a real reason to keep something like this. She doesn't have anywhere she could wear it, absolutely no reason to hang onto it, but she still brings it home with her, and she even washes it.

~X~

The Silhouette is the third costumed adventurer to make the first page, but the difference between the Silhouette and Hooded Justice, and Nite Owl too, is that she is a woman. And the papers take a great interest in that, and Edie can't help but become even more fascinated as she reads about it, and about the things that all of these heroes are doing. It had never occurred to her that a woman could do something like that, but when she thinks about that, she becomes so angry she can't stand it, even though she isn't sure who, exactly, she's angry at.

She's strong, probably stronger than the Silhouette, and she wants to be stronger than Nite Owl and Hooded Justice. If she put on a costume, they'd be on the same side- she knows that the costumed criminals have not been very lucky, so that's out- but still she wants to fight them, wants to get strong enough that she could take them both on without breaking a sweat.

Her mind is made up before she's even put the newspaper down, and she washes the yellow suit again, realizing that she had always had a reason for holding onto it, even if she hadn't realized that was what it was at the time. She goes to a small costume store one afternoon and pockets a mask and a pair of gloves, both a rich purple, and starts patrolling the streets that night.

~X~

Edie isn't lucky at first. She goes out nearly every night after work, and she gets plenty of weird looks but doesn't come across a single situation in need of a hero. It's almost enough to get her to give up early, but she doesn't, and she's getting less sleep now that she stays out late to patrol and gets up early to keep up with her regular exercise routine. Her determination and her desperation for the chance to beat somebody up, to finally get the chance to _fight_ in this shithole city, keep her going, until she finally comes across a mugging.

The thug isn't threatened and asks her what a “little boy like you” is going to do, and she isn't even surprised when she doesn't try to correct him. In fact, she catches herself trying to make her voice sound deeper as she lunges at him, and by the time she's beaten him to a pulp and shown him exactly what that little boy can do, the lady has run off without even thanking her. She doesn't care because, for the first time in a long time, she's invigorated, energized by the chance to get violent.

She's so happy, in fact, that she splurges on her next paycheck and adds a pair of purple boots to her costume.

~X~

The next two additions to her costume are just to be flashy, because she wants her costume to look a little bit cooler. She's easily able to steal a set of red buttons, and since she was forced to learn to sew at a young age, she's able to attach them herself, replacing the plain yellow circles the suit originally came with. After that, she pockets a belt buckle, also red, that looks like a mask of comedy.

_Because I'm so funny_ , she thinks, and that's when she realizes that she doesn't really have a name or motif picked out. She's just been patrolling and beating mugger and thugs senseless, but she hasn't really done much else. The newspapers have started to talk about the rumors of a young boy in a yellow costume, but there's been nothing concrete and she hopes that she can make a name for herself soon enough.

~X~

Her lucky day comes when she is passing by a bank and a large crowd is gathered outside. It takes only a few seconds of eavesdropping to learn that there's a robbery in progress, and even less time for her to decide what she's going to do. She's taken to carrying her costume in a bag with her, and she changes in the alley and shoves through the crowd.

Several people step aside when they see a costumed adventurer coming through, and by the time she reaches the door, she's got a plan in mind. It's a lone man holding the tellers hostage at gun point. He had a habit of looking away from those outside the door for just long enough to give her an opening, and she keeps him from noticing her into the crowd until she strikes, charging and tackling him, and throwing his gun to the side.

It doesn't take a lot to knock him unconscious, and she puts on a good show for the crowd, grinning all the way. She feels so alive in that moment, like she's finally herself, and by the time the cops arrive, someone from the newspaper has too. They take her picture and ask her what her name is.

“It's gotta be something to do with comedy, right?” they ask, pointing to her belt.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” she says, using the deeper voice that she's starting to become accustomed to. “I'm the Comedian!” It's a spur of the moment decision, but she likes the name, and she thinks it'll stick. She even spells it out for them, because she remembers a time in school, when she learned that there was a feminine spelling for it, comedienne.

Edie doubts they know about that, and she's sure that they'll continue to assume about her, but a part of her still thinks it's important.

After that, she's mobbed with questions about the meaning behind the name, and she bullshits more answers. The next day, she's made the front page of the paper, and she can't help but feel like she's finally made it.

~X~

The Silk Spectre is the next female hero to show up in the news, and Edie doesn't count herself because the papers refer to her as a boy and she doesn't feel inclined to correct anyone's assumptions. However, she makes a very different impression on Edie, and the population as a whole, than the Silhouette ever did.

For one thing, she doesn't have much of a secret identity; from the beginning she does not keep the name Sally Jupiter a secret, and it's very obvious that she's doing all of this to make a grab at some sort of fame. She's also not shy when it comes to working her natural sex appeal, and she wears a revealing, eye-catching costume that Edie is immediately drawn to, because it's primarily yellow.

But there's more to it than that, and she's overall drawn to articles about and pictures of this Silk Spectre for a reason that she's only barely beginning to understand. She knows that she must be infatuated, and she knows the implications of having those sorts of feelings for a woman, but somehow, it doesn't feel off to her, even though she knows it should. Somehow, she doesn't feel queer even though she knows that that's what this is supposed to mean, and then she wonders how one actually _feels_ queer, and what that's supposed to feel like, and then she decides not to bother thinking about it at all, because it's way too complicated.

~X~

Edie responds to the invitation to join the Minutemen for a number of reasons. There's a part of her that's been very lonely since coming to the city, the part of her that's really been lonely for her entire life, the part that couldn't make friends in school any easier than she can at her factory job. She wonders if a group of heroes will be different, if she'd be able to fit in more there because at least they wouldn't be too put off by how much she loves fighting.

Besides that, there's the glory that she thinks will come with being part of an elite, exclusive group like that. Becoming the Comedian wasn't necessarily done for the attention, but she likes the attention, and she likes seeing people treat her like a hero and praise her for what she does best, and if possible, she'd like as much of that as she can possibly get.

Finally, there is the fact that Sally Jupiter is partially responsible for the formation of this group. She is collaborating with another costumed adventurer, one Captain Metropolis, to create this team, and if Edie joins, then she will not only get to meet the new object of her fantasies, but also get to work with her on a daily basis. It's a long shot to think about there ever actually being anything between them, but right now, she feels like just getting to meet her will be enough.

~X~

Because the papers think Edie's a boy and because she's getting used to keeping up that facade, the Minutemen assume as well, and she never corrects them and she uses the deeper voice whenever she talks to them. If she ever slips up, sometimes she met with a laugh and a joke about puberty, because everyone can tell that she's young.

Things aren't exactly ideal in the group, but she's trying to make the best of it. The problem is that, once again, being around people does not necessarily mean she's capable of getting along with them, and she finds most of her team irritating. No one really _gets_ why she is the way she is, and she's constantly scolded for “overdoing it” with violence. It's almost enough to make her want to pound of their faces in, to show them just how violent she can get.

The exception to this rule is Sally, who is everything Edie thought she would be and more. She welcomes Edie in immediately, flirting with her the same as she does with the other men, and Edie finds herself flirting back, hoping that it seems as natural to Sally as it feels to her. There might not be anything between them, but the way Sally winks at her, or rests a hand on her arm and laughs at one of her jokes, makes her feel like there could be, someday, if she's like. It's delusional, but she's young and she's never been in love before, but she thinks this might be it.

Even if things aren't ideal in the team, she starts to think she's found a place where she belongs anyway. She's comfortable, even if there are arguments or if she gets irritated, and she feels more and more like herself every day. She turns sixteen without incident.

~X~

One night, when they're getting off from patrol, Sally claps her shoulder and says, “Nice job out there, tough guy,” and it's the single greatest moment of Edie's life.

~X~

One day, she overhears Nite Owl talking to Captain Metropolis about her, expressing concern for her more violent outbursts. His exact words were, “We can't trust that kid, you know. He's way too dangerous to be left on his own, and I think he could benefit from having someone like you or me around to temper him more often. He's still young, you know, so there's still hope for him, with the right kind of guidance.”

Normally, that kind of talk pisses her off, but she doesn't fly completely off the handle because she likes to listen to other people talking about her, and hearing the way they refer to her. Even after all this time, the team still believes she's a boy, and that's always made her feel better about herself, like she's finally becoming the person she was meant to be. She can't explain it, but when she creeps around doorways here and listens to them call her “he”, it just feels right, for the first time in her life.

Edie makes decides to start consciously thinking of herself in that way from here on out, and if she's ever asked her name, she decides that Eddie is a better substitute.

~X~

“ _There's something wrong with our daughter. I know you've noticed, Mary. She's not right and you know it!”  
“She certainly gets in a lot of fights...”_

“ _She acts like a goddamn boy! Having a son would have been fine, but she's my daughter, damn it!”_

“ _Michael, I think you're overreacting a little bit.”_

“ _You've noticed, haven't you?”_

~X~

It takes a little bit of getting used to and quite a few mental reminders, but Eddie really does think that this suits him better. He doesn't understand himself anymore than he ever did before, but he doesn't care so much about understanding himself. All he really cares about is feeling right, about not having to wonder why he's so goddamn uncomfortable all the time, like he's wrong for some reason. For once in his life, he really feels right, and he's so glad that he became the Comedian and gave himself an opportunity for that.

He tells Sally that his name is Eddie one day, for no reason other than he wants somebody to know, and he doesn't really have anyone else he trusts. At work, he's still Edie, and he doesn't talk to anyone outside of work or the Minutemen. Sally tells him it's a cute name, which wasn't exactly what he was going for, but it's still a compliment, and he'll always accept any sort of compliment from Sally.

He wonders if there's any possibility of him being with her, all while keeping his secret, or if she would look at his secret and think that it wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe she would understand things, if he just had a chance to explain them to her. “It's not like I'm actually queer,” he would say, because how can he be? He doesn't know how to explain that part to her, but maybe if she understands that he isn't really a girl, that there was just some kind of mistake, then everything will turn out just fine.

~X~

He thinks his opportunity comes one afternoon, when they've taken their publicity photo and she announces that she's going off to change. She catches him staring and she winks so he follows after her, treating her look like an invitation. When they're alone together, it'll only be natural for things to get heated, and in the heat of the moment, he'll have his chance to explain everything to her. She has to understand.

“Hi,” he says, after he's watched her for a little bit. He realizes that he should have spoken sooner, but he got caught up staring as she exposed areas of her skin he's never seen before.

“Eddie?” She looks surprised, even a little bit angry; is she playing hard to get? “What the hell are you doing here? You knew I was changing.”

“Sure I did,” he replies, trying to sound casual. “You announced it loud enough.”

She looks nervous as he closes the distance between them, but this has to work, she has to understand. “C'mon, baby,” he says, hoping that he's saying the right thing. He suddenly realizes just how little experience he has, how young he must seem to her. “I know what you need. You gotta have some reason for wearin' an outfit like this, huh?” She dresses like the ideal woman should, she's exactly what Eddie thinks about when he thinks about what a girl should be. He has his reasons for dressing the way he does, so she must, and he snatches her dress away to try to get a good look at her.

“E-Eddie, no...” she says, and he doesn't like the terrified look in her eyes. He doesn't like it one bit, and he reaches out to touch her hand, almost tenderly.

“S'not like that, baby,” he says. “I don't wanna hurt you, I just wanna be with ya, cos you're the only...you're the only person I've ever been like this with! I wanted to explain everything to ya, and see if maybe you might understand.”

“Eddie, what are you talking about?” she asks, her fear replaced with temporary confusion. He lets her hand go and unfastens his belt. She watches him as he undresses, nervous and on-guard but not moving to leave because she's curious. Once he shrugs out of the sleeves of his jumpsuit, her eyes widen, studying the undershirt he wears that doesn't do as much to hide his more feminine features.

When he undoes his pants, it's even easier for her to tell exactly what it is that he's trying to explain to her, and her eyes go even wider until she suddenly cracks a smile. For a moment, he brightens, he thinks she gets it, but then she bursts out laughing, and this time he doesn't like the sound of her laughter so much.

“What kinda sick joke is this, Eddie?” she asks. “Is that even your name? Seriously, what the fuck are you trying to pull, dressing up like a boy and playing hero? You some kinda queer, trying to come onto girls like that?”

“No, Sal, that isn't- I'm not queer, I'm just-”

“Well, sure you are!” she replies, laughing even harder at him. “I mean, you were a girl all along!”

He doesn't want to snap, but he does. He doesn't really want to hurt her, but he does. He doesn't want any of this, but it's what he's been given and he punches her hard in the stomach. She doubles over and he hits her, again and again and again, before pulling his costume back into place, buttoning it back up so he has more freedom of movement with his arms. His gloves are on the floor and his belt is hanging open, but he doesn't care and he knocks her to the ground, climbing on top of her.

He doesn't know what he's planning on doing to her, but in that moment, he wants to make her pay for laughing at him, for not understanding like he wanted her to. And he wants to make her pay for his parents and for the ladies at work and for the rest of the people who will always look at him like he's the problem, like there's something wrong with him.

Hooded Justice catches him like that, and assumes what's going on from Sally's state of undress and Eddie's open belt. He beats the shit of Eddie before letting him go, but Sally doesn't speak up the whole time.

~X~

For his crimes, he's told they're going to take a vote on whether or not he should be allowed to remain in the Minutemen. Sally still hasn't told them about their true conversation, but Eddie tells them not to bother, because he's quitting anyway.

 


End file.
